In 2013, the Obama administration offered “Housing First” as the means to end homelessness in 10 years. A decade later, homelessness is more prevalent than ever, and the taxpayer has been financing ever increasing funding to programs that are failing to achieve their stated goal of ending homelessness.

Key Points:

  1. The “Housing First” approach was proposed to end homelessness by 2023 but there has been no significant reduction since its implementation.
  2. The current method of evaluating homelessness services measure compliance rather than performance.
  3. Third party audits of Continua of Care can help identify inefficiencies in the system and allow funds to be allocated more effectively.